Ong published a lengthy review essay about that book and
McLuhan's years at SLU in CRITICISM: A QUARTERLY FOR LITERATURE AND THE ARTS
(1970). Ong's review essay is reprinted in AN ONG READER: CHALLENGES FOR
FURTHER INQUIRY (2002, pages 69-77).

Over his long and productive scholarly life, Ong maintained
his interest in Hopkins by occasionally publishing reviews of books about
Hopkins and occasionally discussing Hopkins in his own articles. For example,
in "Evolution, Myth, and Poetic Vision" in the journal COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
STUDIES (1966), Ong discusses Hopkins' poetry extensively. Ong reprinted it in
his book IN THE HUMAN GRAIN: FURTHER EXPLORATIONS OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURE
(1967, pages 99-126). However, Ong does not mention "Evolution, Myth, and Poetic
Vision" in HOPKINS, THE SELF, AND GOD (1986).

Ong's laser-like focus of certain issues in HOPKINS, THE
SELF, AND GOD leads him not to mention certain other of his own scholarly
publications -- for example, his publications about Milton.

Because Hopkins' poetry was not published until 1918, it was
often considered to be part of the literary movement known as modernism. T.S.
Eliot and Ezra Pound (1885-1972) were other poets in that literary movement. As
a result of that misclassification of Hopkins' poetry, later literary scholars
have labored diligently to show that Hopkins should be considered to be a
Victorian. In his book HOPKINS, THE SELF, AND GOD, Ong accepts that later
literary scholarship and also makes his own contributions to why Hopkins should
be considered to be a Victorian.

Ong liked to say that we need both closeness (proximity) and
distance to understand something. In HOPKINS, THE SELF, AND GOD (1986), Ong
claims that "the technologies of writing, print, and computers" are distancing
and objectivizing. He also claims that the "inward turn of consciousness
develops in counterbalance with the outward turning implemented by the
distancing or 'objectivizing of [those technologies]" (page 130).

Now, Hopkins wrote certain sonnets expressing extremely
anguishing experiences. Ong suggests that Hopkins wrote those poems "in part to
distance the experience out of which they grew" (page 135). Ong further
suggests that writing those poems expressing his extreme anguish may have
helped "Hopkins manage the experience better" (page 135).

For Hopkins, I would say that writing those poems about his
extreme anguish also involved a kind of self-giving -- a giving of his
experiences of extreme anguish to others who might read those poems. Citing
Mariani, Ong notes that "such self-giving calls for strong ego-structures"
(page 39).

In HOPKINS, THE SELF, AND GOD (1986), Ong discusses
energy-center imagery in Hopkins' and other Victorians' writings (pages 17-18,
110-112, and 129).

Even though I do not agree with all of Ong's religious
convictions, I stand in awe of his own energy as manifested not only in this
book but in his entire body of scholarly work.

After HOPKINS, THE SELF, AND GOD was published, Ong
published "Technological Development and Writer-Subject-Reader Immediacies" in
the book ORAL AND WRITTEN COMMUNICATION: HISTORICAL APPROACHES, edited by
Richard Leo Enos (1990, pages 206-215). Ong's essay is centered on Hopkins and
his use of newspaper reports that had been telegraphed in to the newspaper. It
is reprinted in AN ONG READER: CHALLENGES FOR FURTHER INQUIRY (2002, pages
497-504). That essay continues and further develops Ong's discussion of
electric telegraphy and Hopkins' poetry in HOPKINS, THE SELF, AND GOD (1986,
pages 48-52).

For a well-researched recent study of Hopkins, see Dennis
Sobolev's book THE SPLIT WORLD OF GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS: AN ESSAY IN SEMIOTIC
PHENOMENOLOGY (2011).

In his own way, Ong explores semiotic phenomenology in his
own work (he repeatedly says that his work is concerned about noetic
developments), perhaps most notably in his essay "Voice as Summons for Belief:
Literature, Faith, and the Divided Self" in the journal THOUGHT A REVIEW OF
CULTURE AND IDEA (1958). Ong's 1958 essay is reprinted in AN ONG READER:
CHALLENGES FOR FURTHER INQUIRY (2002, pages 259-275).

For a bibliography of Ong's 400 or so publications, see the
late Thomas M. Walsh's bibliography of Ong's publications, including
information about reprintings and translations in the book LANGUAGE, CULTURE,
AND IDENTITY: THE LEGACY OF WALTER J. ONG, S.J., edited by Sara van den Berg
and Walsh (2011, pages 185-245).